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[FYI] UK-DTI Mr. Wills: "We must all be free to live in cyberspa
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- Subject: [FYI] UK-DTI Mr. Wills: "We must all be free to live in cyberspa
- From: Horns@t-online.de (Axel H. Horns)
- Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 09:35:26 +0100
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http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/05/19/timopnope01002.html
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May 19 1999
OPINION
We must all be free to live in cyberspace, says Michael
Wills
[...]
But the Net is no longer a territory colonised only by
those brilliant idealists who created it. Its success - with
80,000 new users coming online every day - is rapidly
integrating it into everyday life. More and more, what
happens on the Internet erupts into the physical world and
affects real people - for good and ill. Millions buy and sell
over the Net: the global market for e-commerce is
predicted to reach more than a trillion dollars by 2003.
People meet over the Net. Criminals use it to evade the
law.
The debates taking place in this country and elsewhere in
Europe and in international forums such as the OECD are
being seen by some as a battleground between the
individual and the State. They fear that the Net's success
is creating a familiar itch in governments for control.
But if governments simply stood aside, what might
happen? Would the Net continue to be a communal
village, peopled by benign surfers? More likely we will see
the real problems and conflicts of the non-virtual world
seeping into cyberspace as use spreads. Reports in
America suggest that fraud cases on the Net quintupled
last year. The posting of MI6 agents' names on the
Internet this week, dangerous to individuals and damaging
to British interests, illustrates the problems governments
can face.
And there are no easy answers. The technology enables
the malevolent and the criminal to move more swiftly than
ever before. And governments must always be scrupulous
in their respect for liberty and human rights.
The task before us does not end with tackling the dark
side of this revolution. Equally importantly, we must
ensure that the benefits do not remain confined to the
powerful and technologically literate. Without legislation, it
would take time and costly court cases to establish a
secure legal basis for the electronic signatures that are the
building blocks for electronic commerce. In the meantime,
the enormous benefits of doing business over the Net
would be confined essentialy to the prosperous and
powerful. The e-commerce Bill coming before the
Commons later this summer will help to secure a
framework of trust for doing business electronically as
quickly and cheaply and fairly as possible.
Everyone must have a stake in this revolution. That is why
the last Budget announced hundreds of millions of pounds
of investment to make access to the Internet available to
everyone, opening up new opportunities through a national
network of learning centres. That is why the Government
is launching a campaign to drive home to small businesses
the advantages of the Net and the opportunities open to
them through support centres nationwide. The fruit of the
tree of knowledge ended innocence. But with knowledge
came power. And the Internet gives human beings a
unique opportunity to gain power over their own lives. But
only if it is available to everyone. The e-commerce Bill
and our investment in developing skills and providing
advice will make a start in doing this.
It may once have appeared that the battle was between
freedom and authority. Today it is about government
finding ways to ensure that every individual and business
can take advantage of the opportunities offered by new
technologies and that they do not create new inequalities
and undermine social cohesion. The debate over the
Internet is not about big, bad government aching to
control everything. It is about how government can best
provide everyone with opportunities we could not have
dreamt of ten years ago. The end of innocence can also
be the start of mature freedoms.
The author is a minister at the DTI
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